Listen to News with Tara Benwell - Instructions:
1. Preview the vocabulary and read the gapfill text.
2. Play the news report and try to fill in the blanks.
3. Answer the comprehension questions by writing full sentences.
4. Use the discussion question to write an essay or discuss the story with other students.
5. Click "show Answers" to see the full text.
6. Pretend to be a news anchor by reading each story out loud.

dateline: 24 January 2018

German Nurse Charged with 97 More Murders

Pre-Listening Vocabulary

life sentence: an order from a judge to spend life in prison as punishment for a crime

German Nurse Charged with 97 More Murders

A German nurse who was already serving a life sentence for causing death or bodily to 6 patients has now been charged for causing 97 more deaths. Niels Hoegel fought off boredom at work by injecting patients with non-prescribed that would cause heart failure. He would then try to revive the patients to show off his ability to save lives. The nurse has that he experienced a high when he was able to resuscitate a and a low when he was not. The patients died due to the effects of the drugs. Over 100 bodies have been exhumed during the investigation, and police say there are more whose bodies have already been cremated.

Comprehension Questions

What job did the killer hold?

Why did the killer inject patients with drugs they did not need?

Why won’t some victims ever be added to the murder count?

Discussion Questions

show Answershide Answers

German Nurse Charged with 97 More Murders

A German nurse who was already serving a life sentence for causing death or bodily harm to 6 patients has now been charged for causing 97 more deaths. Niels Hoegel fought off boredom at work by injecting patients with non-prescribed drugs that would cause heart failure. He would then try to revive the patients to show off his ability to save lives. The nurse has admitted that he experienced a high when he was able to resuscitate a patient and a low when he was not. The patients died due to the effects of the drugs. Over 100 bodies have been exhumed during the investigation, and police say there are more victims whose bodies have already been cremated.

The killer was a nurse.

He injected patients with drugs they did not need so that he could try to revive them and show off his ability to resuscitate a patient.

Some victims won’t ever be accounted for because their bodies were cremated.

Written by Tara Benwell for EnglishClub

Tara Benwell is a Canadian freelance writer and editor who specializes in materials and articles for the ELT industry.

4 Comments

We had a similar case here some times back. I find it beyond imagination to think how can any human being even think of acting like that, even less people who works in the health care system.

It is one of the biggest breaches of trust a person ever can make towards others. I am wondering how could he even take the life of 97 patients before anyone even started to notice something was wrong.

This is very disturbing and terrifying, though I do not think it is any rare case.

The rules for who can be trusted such big responsibilities as it is to be responsible for taking care of another person, should be more strict.

Thank you, nice to hear your voice 🙂

Happy weekend.

Qasim says:

It is clear that we are in front of a full murder .Such cases need more analysis and investigation to form a clearer ceducation for all employees in field of medicine.
To show their skills ,nurse or doctors ,whom we respect,can expose their skill and fame in a more positive way , not by exposing patients’ lives to danger.Patients are not inanimate objects which can be used in lab.

Bijan says:

Hi Tara,

First, thank you for this week’s news report.

Second, I think the nurse is a mental patient (psychotic) because if he had mental health, he never did this terrible crime.

Third, it’s not clear in the news report that has the nurse been examined by the court about mental health or not?

Fourth, in many countries the criminals don’t have criminal liability, if it proves that they are mental patients.

Best wishes and have a nice weekend in Canada,
Bijan from the Persian Gulf

Alberto says:

Contrary to popular belief there are a lot of similar cases to this around the World.